Note 34 — ROJO’S NARRATIVE

52. This effort tied the hands of the English, who irritated by a negative answer, could have assigned two fragatas of their squadron to coast along the provinces, and cause this horrible uneasiness. If they did that, (unless it was averted by divine Providence), the ruin of the instruction and faith of the neophytes would be experienced. These reasons having been meditated upon before Jesus Christ, our life, from whose service depended that of a Catholic king, the archbishop resolved on the twenty-eighth to avoid the greater evil, and to assure the conservation of the islands, and the teaching and doctrine of our holy religion in them by keeping their natives quiet. Thereupon, on the said day, and on the following, the twenty-ninth, he wrote letters to the prelates and to the provinces, with the intention of using them opportunely;34 and without making mention of those letters, he replied on the date of the twenty-ninth35 in the Latin language to the above-mentioned letter, also in Latin, of General Draper, explaining to him diffusely and vigorously the difficulty of What he asked. His reasons, if they did not suffice to convince him, lessened the violence and force which were uttered a thousand times in said letter.